Sunday 16 November 2014

MY HEROES ARE THOSE WHO SAVE LIVES, NOT LOSE THEM!

Four years after
9/11, I was standing beside New York City’s ‘Ground Zero’, reading the
hoardings hung on the wire fences around the site of the attack.

One of them
declared: “In memory of all those great American Heroes.”

Turning to my
friend, I observed:

“It’s strange the
way the word ‘hero’ is used these days.”

I was about to
explain how they were innocent victims rather than heroes, but I never got the
chance.

A hand grasped my
shoulder. I was spun around to face a grey-haired man in an anorak and
spectacles.

“Hey! Show some
goddam respect!” he hissed at me.

Had I shouted to
my mate, I might have understood this man’s rage. But I had whispered. The
scene before my eyes had filled me with sadness, and my voice went quiet as if
wev were in a church.

So I was showing
respect. Had I been more foolish I would have tried to explain to this man what
I meant. But I could see the pain behind his eyes, the loss, the anger, so I
dipped my chin and simply said “Sorry!”, walking away with my tail between my
legs.

Who knows who he
loved in the towers, but as much as my heart broke for all those lives lost and
broken, my sadness was spreading far wider, to the hundreds of thousands of
innocent victims in Iraq who died, as a result of this attack. Members of the
public killed for no good reason. The powers that be have long referred to
civilian deaths during wartime as ‘collateral damage’.

It’s a hellish
long way from ‘hero’ to ‘collateral damage’ but they are one and the same
person.

Very sad.

Whenever
particular wars flare up, foreign populations become especially agitated,
seeing one ousted overpowered people as more important than others.

I cannot. I just
see a human life, each as vital as all the others. So now, enveloped as we are
in memories of the First World War, my heart bleeds fiercely, as it always does
when I contemplate that horrendous debacle.

There is no way to
wage war tidily. Even the crisp technology of remote-controlled drone warfare
kills innocent victims aplenty. However there is something especially tragic
about the 1914-1918 war.

The odds were
stacked against the innocents for so many reasons:

The weapons of war
had changed. Artillery fire had become faster and more furious, leaving the
infantry hiding in putrid trenches. The makers of war still envisaged two
armies facing each other in the field, so they used all their powers to recruit
as many men as they could, yet technological advances meant that no such battle
was possible. Shells, shells, endless shells pounding exploding killing
maiming, followed by poison gas, as soldiers sat impotent and rotting in their
muddy holes.

Then there was the
pointlessness of the war, fighting over 100 yards of Belgium to satisfy the
hubristic Empire aspirations of European aristocracy. Those soldiers were
expendable: 1c and 2c coins in the coffers of the continent's Crowned Heads.

Then of course,
there were the lies. The idea that it mattered at all. I’m not being
disrespectful of those who died by saying that their war was pointless. They
were brave men and women, doing their duty.

Lies lie behind
many wars. For a reason that is beyond me, people swallow these lies to this
day. Two months ago the UK government said that by fighting ISIS they’d make
the world a safer place. Last week the BBC reported that the government was
warning Britons abroad to be vigilant, as their participation in the war on
ISIS has made the world a more dangerous place.

Lies abounded back
then. Lloyd George promised surviving returning soldiers ‘A Land Fit For
Heroes’, yet there was nothing for them. Post-traumatic and unemployed, decades
before either ailment was treated by the State, a generation succumbed to the
Spanish Flu epidemic. Dark times indeed.

Lies. It was the
Great War. Nothing great about it, except the number of innocent victims.

It was The War To
End All Wars, but clearly, it was merely the overture to the symphony of modern
warfare.

They’d be back by
Christmas.

I don’t think so.

Far from being
disrespectful to the dead, I am honouring their sacrifice. They were innocent
victims. Most of them were out there so the children back home could afford to
eat. Putting yourself through hell so that you can keep your family healthy:
that, to me, is heroic. Getting killed for a government who quite frankly
doesn't give a damn: that is truly terrible.

Of course there
were heroes out there. Incredible daring and courage was displayed on a regular
basis. When it was employed to save lies rather that destroy them it was
particularly heroic.

I’m not saying
that all killing is bad. Give me a gun and I’d shoot a Nazi stormtrooper, no
problem.

But my heroes tend
to be those who dare to save their troops. Give me Shackleton over Scott every
day. Scott was an amazing man, brave and honourable to the core. But in the
same way that the English celebrate Dunkirk as a victory, they worship a man
who came second and perished with his comrades.

Shackleton’s
expedition failed spectacularly, yet he didn’t lose a single man. I have just
read his own account of the Endurance expedition, the ensuing landing on
Elephant Island, the incredible journey in the James Caird and the epic
crossing of South Georgia. These were tough men, hard and steely in a way so
far beyond your sofa, your iPad and cappuccino that I suspect it no longer
exists.

Despite his strong
ambition and a desire for glory, Shackleton made every decision based upon his
greatest chance of keeping everyone alive.